MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Meet the musician tackling mental health
SPOKE: Music, Meditate, Sleep
Motivate, breathe, focus, flow
What do hip-hop music, rap, beats and bars have to do with mental wellbeing? Not much, you may think. But Lemzi, a London–based music artist and co-creator of meditation app Spoke is here to change your mind.
“I always remember when someone came up to me to say that one of my songs had helped them through their depression,” Lemzi recalls. “Measuring the impact of how you affect someone is way more important than getting loads of streams.”
That was part of the reason why Lemzi joined forces with his friend Ariana Alexander-Sefre to work on Spoke, which offers science-based meditation and mindfulness sessions that blend hip-hop and spoken word with breath work, natural sounds and binaural beats.
Who do we want to listen to this? It’s the people who may not have ever considered meditation.
– Lemzi, co-creator of Spoke
The app is for anyone, but the aim is to reach people who are often forgotten by the wellness industry. “Who do we want to listen to this? It’s the people who may not have ever considered meditation or mindfulness apps but who would always watch football or YouTube, or listen to music as their form of ‘therapy’,” explains Lemzi.
“It starts with us trying to communicate with young men, and in particular those who love rap music. We want to ensure we’re speaking to these people, but also not excluding anyone else who feels this resonates with them.”
Unfortunately there is an unhappy story behind this. In 2017, Alexander-Sefre experienced the loss of three acquaintances, all young men, to suicide. She recalls how their grieving male friends “all refused school counselling”.
Alexander-Sefre was motivated to create a tool for mental wellness that young men would find accessible. “Music has the ability to connect with people that governments, schools and healthcare services cannot reach,” she explains.
Lemzi, who at that time was working as a mentor with young people while also pursuing his music career, was gaining valuable insight into what matters to people in that age group. “It elucidated how important music, writing lyrics and creativity is, especially to young guys as a form of self-expression,” he says.
Initially the pair decided to collaborate on “rap music meditation experiences” that merged hip-hop with mindfulness. Lemzi recalls that in late 2019, after raising some small early investments, “Ariana hit me up and said, ‘I’ve got an idea’.”
The idea, of course, was for Spoke. “The concept of something that could help me with my own mental wellbeing but also provide an avenue for me to help other people felt like it made perfect sense,” says Lemzi.
Spoke is a fascinating experience. The app’s music is created with advice from a team of scientists, including a cognitive behavioural therapist and a neuroscientist. Spoke’s musicians go through specific training and sounds are placed carefully depending on the intention of the session.
For an artist like Lemzi – who created a large body of the lyrics and music, and narrates the majority of the mediation session introductions – writing music in this way was both novel and challenging. “I am used to going into a studio and I can write bars. But now the concept is, ‘What can I offer in service to somebody who is listening?’ We found most artists, including myself, love that challenge.”
Currently, the majority of the artists involved in the app are Black and this, Lemzi explains, “has happened organically”.
“Everyone we work with, we feel will be able to assimilate with what Spoke is trying to achieve. We look for artists who may have already alluded to mindfulness in their music or have a particular production style that means this wouldn’t be too much of a shift from what they usually do.”
We look for artists who may have already alluded to mindfulness in their music.
– Lemzi
So far, the response to the app has been very positive. “Every time I’ve demonstrated Spoke publicly or in a performance, it has created real impact,” Lemzi says.
Both Lemzi and Alexander-Sefre see the app evolving in future. “We want to get house mindfulness, jazz mindfulness and blues mindfulness going,” says Lemzi, “but remembering our core and our foundation is really important. We want to make sure that everyone who is close to who we are as individuals feels that Spoke continues to represent them.”